-
Review: Audio-Technica ANC23 Noise Canceling ear buds
For my birthday, my wife bought me a very nice pair of Senneiser noise canceling earbuds. They actually were the top of the line. A few months later, Newegg sent my wife email and left a message saying that the earbuds were recalled. They sent a postage paid return label, apologized, and gave us a $20 credit. I sent them back and started searching for a replacement. Looking for any active noise canceling earbuds was quite hard as there are very few; the price range was pretty huge, so I could get basically whatever I wanted. I searched and searched and ended up settling on the Audio-Technica ANC23
. When I bought them, they were $75 and while that seems a bit steep, they were far less expensive than the Senneiser ones.
-
Review: APC Power Saving SurgeArrest
A few months ago when the local utility guilted me into conserving more energy, I bought an APC 4 Outlet Power-Saving Timer SurgeArrest
and a APC 6 Outlet Power-Saving Timer SurgeArrest
to shut off components of my media center at night. The surge protectors are your basic surge protectors, but have a built in timer that allows me to set times for the strip to turn on and turn off. I set up one timer to basically turn off from 11:30 pm to 5:30 am and the other to turn off from 10:30 pm to 6:30 am. Setup is extremely simple and I have already seen a reduction on my electricity bill. Some of the media center components sucked a bunch of juice and by turning things off for 1/3 of the day, it's no wonder I've already seen a slight reduction in my electricity!
-
Review: HDHomeRun
About 2 years ago, I replaced our TiVo with a Mac Mini with 2 Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus
HD tuners. The system has worked pretty well, but occasionally I had to reset the boxes (they were connected via USB and each had a power supply) and that caused some shows to not record. I tried to alleviate the problem by scripting the EyeTV software to quit and restart each day. In addition, I tried using a Sophosticated Circuits PowerKey to toggle the power supplies on and off, but that didn't work well either. The PowerKey software was basically abandoned several years ago and kept crashing. In addition, it didn't helped. I tolerated it up until recently and finally decided to look for alternatives. To make matters worse, the Signal Strength meter on EyeTV never registered over 30% despite me getting a coax amplifier (the tuners worked worse without the amplifier).
-
The need for unlimited data
When I signed up for AT&T last June to get the iPhone 4, the only options I had for data were 200 MB or 2 GB; unlimited data was discontinued before I signed up. I opted for 2 GB to give me some room, in case I needed it. Up until now, I've used at most 250 MB per month. Since I work at home and mostly use Wi-Fi, I use most data on Wi-Fi. Furthermore, when I'm out, I don't stream video or do anything that is high bandwidth. This month, I went on vacation (first real vacation in 5.5 years) and had no Wi-Fi coverage for the entire 5 day trip. My wife and I used the phone to find stuff to do, as well as for some Twitter checking, RSS feed reading, and email. It looks like I'll use maybe 800 MB of my 2 GB allocation. So even with my high (for me) usage, I didn't even use half of my allocation.